This month Jenny Freeman introduces us to the spectacular Armenian Apostolic Church of St Yeghiche, Kensington, London (formerly St Peter’s Church, Cranley Gardens)

Grade II*

View looking east showing the broach spire

The church was originally designed and built by the office of Sir Charles Freake (1814- 84) in 1866-7 using Kentish ragstone and adopting the Victorian “Decorated” Revival style. The surviving tower and prominent broach spire at its north-west corner was Freake’s work, but no-one entering the church in its early days would have imagined the fascinating and successful changes it would undergo in subsequent years.

The church is cruciform in plan with a wide nave, aisles and shallow chancel. The interior was originally faced in brick, now repainted to enhance the effect of the interior.

In 1900, W D Caröe (1857-1938) became involved in enriching the church with new marble on the walls, ironwork screens at the west and south ends and by introducing a clerestory in 1904-6 to let in more natural light. The delicate stained glass was designed by Mary Lowndes. Stained glass by Ward and Hughes (now mainly lost through war damage) was set into the west end.

In 1909, an elegant new organ case and in a new chamber graced the south aisle, supported on four slim clustered columns and enriched with Caröe’s favourite crocketted finials and sculpted figures. A west gallery was added. New vestries and a church hall were built.

North chapel recess as the Armenians now present it.

With immense sensitivity Caröe inserted a Morning Chapel for Holy Communion at the northeast end next to the sanctuary. It is dedicated to the Holy Spirit and deeply contemplative in atmosphere with a low, almost grotto-like recess filled with delicate timber carving under a depressed arch. The gently restrained stained glass, stonework and carving are all to Caröe’s design as are the low bronze entrance gates and rails. Its ceiling is beautifully proportioned, lierne-vaulted in stone, with bosses carved with doves evoking the Holy Spirit.

It was in 1922 that the pre-existing sanctuary was embellished as a WW1 memorial, introducing a semi-circle of stone-carved seating with lacy carved canopies and light stained glass fenestration above them. In the centre is a white marble Crucifixion with intricately detailed crenellations on slim columns enclosing the war memorial below. The carving was carried out by Caröe’s favourite carver, Nathaniel Hitch. The floor is marbled, Cosmati-style.

Caröe retained a special connection with the church where his Memorial Service was held in 1938, as did his partner, Herbert Passmore, a congregant and office-holder till his death in 1966. But yet further changes were to evolve when in June 1975 the church became redundant.

It was leased, then purchased, by the Armenian community in1998 for their own worship. Its Victorian middle-of-the-road Anglican mannerisms were extinguished in favour of a ravishing refitting that retained and re-emphasised, in a wholly sympathetic manner, the best of past changes, heightening their impact by the addition of magnificent new furnishings and colour. Paintings, elaborate gilded ironwork and lighting were added together with features required by Armenian liturgy. The new congregation clearly responded positively to Caröe’s mingling of varied European styles already evident in the church. Architects for the scheme were Austin Winkley and Associates. An effective colour scheme was created with advice from Patrick Baty.

Close-up of east end as refurnished by Armenians.

The paintings introduced by Armenian donors include the altarpiece by the famous Armenian architect,Vartkes Surenyants (1860-1921), a Virgin and Child by living Peruvian artist, Diana Mendoza, and a larger Virgin and Child set against a backdrop of mountains by Andrew Prior.

Some handsome external changes to lighting and ironwork heighten the impact of the building. An intricately carved Armenian Cross is carved into a large stone slab close to the entrance – a feature of Armenian churches.

The result is a triumph of architectural synthesis with a richly devotional atmosphere.

Late in 1806, the itinerant American evangelist, Lorenzo Dow, came to Macclesfield and preached the dedicatory sermon of a new Chapel, belonging to the Free Gospellers, or Revivalists. Initially this group seems to have seceded to the Methodist New Connexion. However, the purchase deed of the Parsonage Street site declared their intention “to build a chapel for themselves and other persons of the Independent Interest dissenting from the established Church of England upon the old Methodistical principles and called the Christian Revivalists.”

The second Annual Meeting of the Independent Methodists was held there in 1807, and Hugh Bourne attended the third Annual Meeting also held there in 1808. Within a few years, however, the Macclesfield revivalists rejected free gospelism and yielded to the attractions of a settled paid ministry. In 1814, the chapel was offered to and accepted by the Methodist New Connexion Conference, sitting in Hanley, to which John Beresford, one of the trustees, was a delegate.

In 1836, the Methodist New Connexion moved to a new, grander chapel in Park Street and in 1858 the old chapel was acquired by seceders from the Unitarian King Street chapel. When, in 1888, the congregation re-joined the King Street chapel, it was decided that the Parsonage Street Chapel should remain as a school. The chapel was sold in 1904 and subsequently was used first as a billiard hall and then as a factory. Following the long period in commercial use, it is now chapel again, being the Elim Christian Life Centre.

With grateful thanks to John Anderson for this contribution to our Chapel of the Month series.

This meeting house was purpose-built for a little-known Christian group, The Churches of Christ, whose membership peaked in 1930, with 16,597 in 184 congregation. They were particularly strong in working class industrial areas, such as Wigan, Birmingham, Leicester and parts of Scotland. Their buildings are deliberately simple, but this one is part of a larger estate, designed by the Arts and Craft influenced, Garden City architect, Raymond Unwin.

Since the Churches often referred to themselves as just Christians or Christian Brethren, it easy to confuse them and their chapels with other bible Christians, such as the Brethren. Indeed, they were part of a wider Victorian ‘primitive’ reaction against respectable denominational religion, as dramatized by the fancy neo-Gothic chapel. Their mission was to restore simple New Testament Christianity and a distinctive package of beliefs included: adult believers Baptism linked to a weekly ‘closed’ Lord’s Supper, followed by an ‘open’ Gospel service, and mutual lay ministry rather than full-time Ministers.

Foundation Stone

Over the twentieth century, these austere positions softened. In 1957, the building was extended and in 1981 Humberstone and the Churches’ majority joined the United Reformed Church (URC) – though two groups, the Old Paths and the Fellowship of Churches of Christ remain separate. Humberstone URC later closed, but another Christian community now worships in the chapel.

However, this is much more than just another isolated nonconformist chapel.

Rather, it’s remarkable as one element of a larger, early twentieth century utopian experiment in Christian and Co-operative community-building. In 1897, a group of boot and shoe workers in the Crafton Street, Leicester Churches of Christ congregation decided to launch a new Anchor workers’ co-operative, dedicated to children’s footwear. Members of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, they already belonged to another co-operative, Equity; a pioneer member of the new Co-operative Co-Partnership movement. Manufacturing began in 1893, and the two key figures, Amos Mann (1855-1939) and J T Taylor (1864-1957), led the group on to build a specialist Anchor factory in New Evington. However, they had larger Co-operative ambitions, some inspired by the Garden City movement.

Estate House

Thus, in 1907, Anchor opened a new garden suburb of semi-detached houses with gardens for working class families, run as a Co-Partnership Tenant Housing Co-operative. In 1910, the Christians Meeting House opened at its centre (an earlier plan to move the factory there had been rejected). Originally out in the country, with playing fields, an institute and other amenities, this small community has now been enveloped by Leicester housing sprawl. Yet it remains a poignant reminder of the strongly Christian origins of the British labour movement and its commitment to voluntary forms of collective self-help and associational life.

In Mann’s words: ‘This estate will remain a monument to the work of humble working men’.

References

Ackers, P., ”West End Chapel, Back Street Bethel: Labour and Capital in the Wigan Churchies of Christ c 1845-1945”, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 47(2), April 1996.

Ackers, P., “Experiments in Industrial Democracy: an historical assessment of the Leicestershire boot and shoe co-operative o-partnership Movement”, Labor History (USA), October 2016.

Mann, A., Democracy in Industry: The Story of Twenty-One Years’ Work of the Leicester Anchor Boot and Shoe Productive Society Limited, Leicester: Co-operative Printing, 1914.

Thomson, D., Let Sects and Parties Fall: A short history of the Association of Churches of Christ in Great Britain and Ireland, Birmingham: Berean Press, 1980.

This month we feature a Chapel at Risk that was brought to our attention by local campaigner Chris Cobley:

This delightful rural Georgian chapel with a remarkably intact original interior has an uncertain future. The chapel in the small village of Ellerton near the River Derwent was closed for worship in May 2017 and the Methodist Church has put the building up for sale. There is no land associated with the chapel, other than the grass verge to the front, and it is difficult to see what the building could be used for.

Almost any new use would require gutting the interior and the removal of the box pews and pulpit, features that make this small chapel of particular significance.

Ellerton Chapel interior (C Cobley)

Such reminders of the way that Methodism contributed so much to the cultural heritage of the rural East Riding of Yorkshire are fast disappearing.The East Riding was one of the most Methodist areas in Britain; out of the 600 nonconformist chapels built in the former administrative county before 1914, some 530 were Methodist – Wesleyan or Primitive. Of these only some 50 pre-1914 chapels remain in use of which only a handful retain their original interior, none as early as that at Ellerton.

Built in 1811 of cream brick the single storey building with hipped slate roof has a central projecting porch. The overlight to the entrance door and the two large windows to the left and right of the porch have Gothick glazing set in a pointed arch with red brick voussoirs.

Ellerton Chapel interior (C Cobley)

The chapel was given a small red-brick extension at the west end, probably in the mid-19th century. There is a small circular window on the west side, and rectangular windows with later glazing in the south front.

Inside six rows of white-painted panelled box pews are tiered, rising from east to west, with the rows divided down the centre. Steps at either end of the rows lead up to panelled doors that open into the top row. A brown painted panelled pulpit centrally placed against the east wall of the chapel is flanked by panelled pews and seating.

When the chapel was built the leading trustee was Barnard Clarkson, who would have met John Wesley when he visited the Clarkson family farm at nearby Foggathorpe in July 1776.

Chris Cobley of the Bubwith Village Trust, with the support of the Georgian Society for East Yorkshire and others, is campaigning to make sure that this splendid small village chapel and its increasingly rare original interior is preserved intact. An application has been made to Historic England seeking the upgrading of the chapel from grade II to II* thereby giving confirmation of the great historical and architectural significance of this chapel and ensuring that due regard of the importance of the building is taken by local and national government and other bodies in deciding its future and provision of financial support.

This month we are pleased to share a contribution from Council member and Baines enthusiast Stuart Leadley.

Trafalgar Street Church today

The Grade II listed Trafalgar Street Church stands on the corner of Beverley Road and Trafalgar Street in Hull. Its foundation stone was laid on 7 December 1904 and the church opened for worship as the Hull Central Baptist Church on 22 February 1906. The church is one of a series of churches in an ‘art nouveau’ free perpendicular style with a distinctive flint and terracotta facing built to the designs of the prolific chapel architects George and Reginald Palmer Baines between 1895 and 1908 in locations as far apart as London, Brighton, Cambridge, Liverpool, and Hull.

The site had been purchased in 1890 with a school-chapel opening in 1892 which subsequently became the school after the opening of the Baines church, and which has now been converted into flats.

For a total cost of £9,000, the completed church had 850 sittings, with seats arranged in circular fashion in the nave and in galleries. An organ (by T Hopkins & Sons of York) was set above and behind the pulpit, which is in turn above the baptistery. By 1916 the church membership had risen to 415, with 33 Sunday school teachers and 245 scholars. By 1936 membership had declined to 139 with 106 scholars.

Trafalgar Street Church

In 1938 the church ceased to be a member of the Baptist Union, becoming a ‘undenominational’ evangelical church which it remained until it closed in 2002. Since closure the building has been empty and subject to the attention of vandals, despite planning consent for conversion into an entertainment venue being granted and being identified as a ‘high priority’ project in Hull City Council’s Beverley Road Townscape Heritage Scheme. SAVE Britain’s Heritage included the church in their ‘Buildings at Risk 2010-2011’.

The Baines practice was credited with designing over 200 church and school buildings in the RIBA Journal obituary of George Baines in 1934.

George Baines was born in Huntingdonshire in 1851 and after serving an architectural apprenticeship in London and Great Yarmouth, set up independent practice in Accrington in 1871. He relocated to London in 1884, and took his eldest son Reginald Palmer Baines (1879-1960) into partnership in 1901. From then until George retired in 1929, most works are credited jointly to father and son. The practice produced a variety of chapel designs in both gothic and other styles, in accordance with changing fashion and church budgets. There are concentrations of their buildings in Lancashire and in the home counties, but there are also examples in many parts of England, from Newcastle to Lowestoft to Southampton.

References:

Pevsner, N and Neave, D; The Buildings of England: Yorkshire: York and the East Riding Second Edition (1995)

From Citadels to Warehouses: Some Places of Worship in Britain Today

This unusual day, organised by the Ecclesiological Society in close collaboration with the Chapels Society, will look at the buildings of six religious communities which have in the past been somewhat neglected. The illustrated lectures will discuss how the various places of worship are used and how that has affected the design of the building.

All are welcome. People find that Ecclesiological Society conferences combine serious intent with an enthusiastic and friendly atmosphere, and are enjoyable both for experts and those new to the topic being considered. A hot lunch is included. There will be a second-hand bookstall. Everyone is invited to finish the day with a glass of wine.

I was recently reminded about the extremely useful Dictionary of Methodism which has been available online for some years. This is an ongoing project of the Wesley Historical Society and contains a wealth of information that will be of use to people researching Methodist history. Well worth a look!

This month’s contribution comes from Angela Swan, Grants Officer for the Listed Places of Worship: Roof Repair Fund administered by the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

Baxter URC – Entrance

Baxter United Reformed Church, a Grade II listed building is located at the heart of Kidderminster town centre. It is named after the influential Puritan preacher Richard Baxter (1615 – 1691), who lived and worked in Kidderminster between 1641 and 1661. Formally a part of the Congregational Church, Baxter became a United Reformed Church when Congregational and Presbyterian churches united in 1972.

The current building was erected in 1884/85 and is the fourth building on the site and is in the early decorated Gothic style of concrete faced with red sandstone and Boxgrove Bath stone dressing, with a spire 140 feet tall.

The church contains some hidden gems. The stained glass windows are stunning and include ‘Charity’ ministering to children and extracts from Baxter’s book “Saints Everlasting Rest”. They were created as a memorial to the influential Adam family from Kidderminster. The pipe organ is also impressive; it is ‘three manual’ instrument installed by Walker and Sons. There are also a couple of distinctive portraits of Richard Baxter, which are in need of conservation, and the only surviving artefact belonging to him in the church is the wooden communion table which is in good condition.

Baxter URC – Dampness

The church is open to the public 260 days a year and is an active community hub and offers a regular Community Lunch, a Foodbank for the most vulnerable, a Job Club that has successfully enabled people to find work. It also hosts a choral group, an award winning youth choir and a Zumba Class!

Baxter United Reformed Church has been successful in receiving an award from the Listed Places of Worship: Roof Repair Fund to address the extensive decay to many parts of the roof which have severely damaged the building for many years. The repair project will focus on the west end of the sanctuary, drainage from the sanctuary roof, drainage from the gutters around the tower, the replacement of inadequate cast iron rainwater disposal components, hoppers and catch pits, and rectifying the consequent damage to internal finishes due to water ingress.

At the west end is an access bridge spanning between the sanctuary roof and the bell opening. This is a curious and improvised detail which is failing and causing severe decay to the interior and permission has been granted to remove it and reinstate the roof and louvers. Repairs start the end of July and will be finished by the end of 2017.

Baxter URC – Display

This money is part of a wider funding package of £22.9million to 401 historic places of worship across the UK. The Fund was launched by the Chancellor in his Autumn Statement in December 2014 and the funding package has now seen a total of 903 places of worship across the UK receive a share of £55million. The Fund is administered by the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) on behalf of the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS).

The C20 Society has been alerted to some serious vandalism to the highly significant 1934 stained glass window by Irish designer Wilhemina Geddes at the Grade II-listed Manor Church Centre in Wallasey on the Wirral. Designed by Briggs, Wolstenholme & Thornley in 1907-8, it was said to be the largest Presbyterian Church in England when it opened. The church contains an important collection of 16 stained glass windows by major Arts and Crafts designers such as Morris & Co and Edward Woore, of which the Geddes window forms part. The church is now in private ownership and in a serious state of disrepair. The Society has requested that Wirral Borough Council take action to ensure that the owner of the building protects this outstanding collection of stained glass.